


Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs

by spectreshepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, Post-War, because Kai and Ash deserve the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:45:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9290915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectreshepard/pseuds/spectreshepard
Summary: Kaidan and Ashley manage to take a moment from a world that took everything else.





	

“Eden Prime.” Ashley states, picking at the thread on Kaidan’s hoodie, draped over her shoulders by the man who stands by the shattered window, eyes downcast, deep in thought.

“Mmh?” Kaidan turns his head as he hears Ash speak, only just registering her words as they tumbled from uncertain lips. That was unlike her. He rubs the back of his neck as his brow furrows in a silent question. Ashley glances up, rubbing her arm nervously.

“That’s where it all started. Fighting geth, you and Shepard showing up… the beacon. My first day on the Normandy was one hell of a day, Kai.” Ash chuckles sombrely as her sentence tails off into thought again, her uncertainty clouding her view of where she was taking the conversation. Kaidan notices, and moves away from the window to sit next to her on the makeshift campbed, one of hundreds sitting in London’s bombed-out streets. 

“Yeah. Didn’t put you off, though.” Kaidan retorts with a gentle grin, nudging her shoulder as he sits. He’s not used to her melancholy, and he can feel the guilt tumbling off her words, all polished and fired like the bullets she’s so used to, but they’re leaving a mark. 

“Hell, no.” Ash says, managing a weak smile, though her gaze doesn’t move from the floor. She sees Kaidan shift in her peripheral, trying to get her to look at him. She knows the way he works, now. And she knows that Kaidan can see exactly what’s bothering her.

“He’ll be _fine_ , Ash.” Kaidan tries the most obvious route, knowing that Shepard lay unconscious in some broken medical bay behind them, covered in bruises and cuts and the remainder of the explosion that almost killed him– God, Kaidan almost wished he hadn’t seen it. Almost. 

“Kaidan…” Ash begins to protest, but Kaidan’s arm settles round her shoulder and gives a reassuring squeeze, a familiar warmth in London’s bitter winter. He knows how much Shepard means to Ash, just as much as it was the other way round. He can’t count all the times he’s seen Shepard smile when she’s not looking, or the times that Ash manages to triple-check Shepard’s firearms down in the cargo bay when Cortez goes on break. 

“I know. I know you want to be there with him, I know you’re blaming yourself for not being there when the Crucible fired, I know you’re hurting like hell right now, because I am too. He’s my best friend, Ash, and so are you.”

Ash had never expected Kaidan to be so blunt. Her surprise is evident as her mouth hangs motionless on a kind of love she doesn’t know how to say. Kaidan’s shoulders dip, the words a clear weight off his mind.

“And I would give _anything_ to go back and do something different, anything, something that meant he wasn’t lying there right now and sitting with us instead, telling us to stop being a pair of soppy idiots–” Ash laughs at that, swiping at her eyes quickly, still so reluctant to betray her barest feelings. Kaidan just smiles, simply glad to hear the sound. It warms the room like nothing else, brings colour back into their shattered snapshot of survival.

“But we can’t go back. We can’t protect everyone.”

“It’s _shit_. It just feels like… like I can’t do anything worth a damn if all those lives were for nothing, if Shepard…” Ash’s voice is nothing more than a collection of broken frequencies, and each discordant note is a bitter sting to Kaidan’s unforgivably human heart. 

“Ash. Look at me, please-” Kaidan tries to meet her gaze again as she drops it to the floor, wavering. She does, eventually, on her own terms. 

“What’s that verse? Shepard told me about this piece of scripture he really liked, he was trying to think of something to give to you for your birthday,” Kaidan pauses, allowing a breathy laugh to fill the silence, remembering Shepard’s panic-induced datapad searching in his cabin on the Normandy, “He was just being ridiculous, worrying whether you’d like it or if you’d call him corny or hopeless.” 

Ash shakes in his arms, but Kaidan can see the curve of her mouth, a gentle smile she only ever had for two people in her life. 

“I read it, what he’d put together, and… huh, I just remember laughing at him, because I knew he had nothing to worry about, because I knew you’d love it. He just told me to shut up.”

“Sounds like him.” Ash sniffs, huffing a laugh as she rubs her eyes again, less discreetly this time. Kaidan rubs her arm soothingly, swallowing a lump in his throat before he tries to carry on.

“ _Love keeps no record of wrongs_. You remember?” he asks, withdrawing his arm gently to rest an open palm in front of Ash. She looks up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears, a sight that Kaidan would only ever see twice in a lifetime, and she smiles, properly. The smile that promised a lifelong friendship back on the SR1, the smile that she gave to Kaidan when they got back from Virmire, the smile that she gives him now as a splinter of hope that they both desperately needed. Ash nods slowly, eyes moving from Kaidan to her clasped hands next to Kaidan’s open palm, and she slowly untangles her fingers. A glint catches the silver band on the middle finger of her right hand, and she places it in Kaidan’s outstretched one. He can just about see the cold engraving, the hidden message from Shepard. 

“ _It always protects, it always trusts. Hopes and perseveres. Love never fails._ ” she murmurs softly, words the same colour as the sunrise now, and Kaidan breathes a sigh of relief as she lets go of her fear to the dawn outside. 

“He made a promise. So did I. None of us are going anywhere.” Kaidan affirms, feeling Ash’s hand curl tightly around his own, so he returns the gesture with a gentle squeeze.

“We’ll bring him home.” Ash says quietly alongside Kaidan’s words, and she lets herself relax against Kaidan, head on his shoulder as they watch the pale sunrise over London’s broken skyline. 

They would rebuild. They would begin again. There would be a new world to usher in, and it would be a brave one, for the man who made it possible. That was all they dared to hope for.


End file.
